around the world

Published Sunday December 30, 2012 at 6:00 am

MOSCOW — Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, said Saturday that there was “no possibility” of persuading President Bashar Assad to leave Syria, leaving little hope for a breakthrough in the standoff.

He also said that opposition leaders’ insistence on Assad’s departure as a precondition for peace talks would come at the cost of “more and more lives of Syrian citizens” in a conflict that has already killed tens of thousands.

After talks in Moscow on Saturday with Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria, Lavrov said that Russia could not press Assad to give up power. Lavrov has said that Russia “isn’t in the business of regime change,” but his characterization of Assad’s stance on Saturday sounded more definitive.

Anti-Assad activists reported intense fighting and a high number of casualties Saturday in the central city of Homs, where, they said, government troops had stormed and bombed the Deir Ba’alba neighborhood.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had received reports of deaths in Homs but could not confirm them because communications with the area had been cut off.

PARIS — Embattled French President Francois Hollande suffered a fresh setback Saturday when France’s highest court threw out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair.

In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande’s flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional. It was intended to hit incomes over

1 million ($1.32 million).

The largely symbolic measure would have only hit a tiny number of taxpayers and brought in an estimated

100 million to

300 million — an insignificant amount in the context of France’s roughly

85 billion deficit.

The French government approved the tax in its most recent budget, amid criticism by some that it would do little to stem the country’s mounting fiscal problems and would drive away the wealthiest citizens. Hollande’s popularity, meanwhile, has been tanking as the country’s unemployment continued its rise for the 19th straight month.

SANAA, Yemen — Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack last week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country.

The officials said the three men were hit as they were riding in a Land Cruiser in el-Manaseh village on the outskirts of Radda in Bayda province. Dozens of local al-Qaida-linked fighters protested the drone strikes after traditional Islamic Friday prayers.

Last week another suspected U.S. drone strike killed two militants in Radda itself, Yemeni security officials say, and seven were killed in two other strikes in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Four suspected drone strikes a week is uncommon in Yemen.

Also on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed an intelligence officer in the southeast, security officials said. They said that the officer, Mutea Baqutian, was on his way to work in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, when the men stopped his car, gunned him down and fled.